Political opinion: Labour’s landmark Water (Special Measures) Bill gains Royal Assent to become Law, and introduces legislation to crack down on bosses polluting waterways in Crawley

The Labour Government has introduced major legislation to crack down on water bosses polluting Britain’s rivers, lakes and seas - the most significant increase in enforcement powers in a decade.The Water (Special Measures) Bill has been granted Royal Assent and is now law which gives regulators new powers to take tougher and faster action to crack down on Southern Water and Thames Water damaging the environment and failing their customers.

The Bill delivers on the manifesto pledges to clean up the water sector, including significantly increasing the ability of the Environment Agency to bring forward criminal charges against law- breaking water executives. It creates new tougher penalties, including imprisonment, for water executives when companies fail to co-operate or obstruct investigations.The new legislation also bans the payment of bonuses to water bosses if they fail to meet high standards to protect the environment, their consumers and their company’s finances.Other measures in the Bill include severe and automatic fines for a range of offences, including allowing regulators to issue penalties more quickly, without having to direct resources to lengthy investigations.

It also introduces independent monitoring of every sewage outlet, with water companies required to publish real-time data for all emergency overflows. Discharges will have to be reported within an hour of the initial spill.

Peter Lamb, Member of Parliament for Crawley said: “After 14 years of Conservative failure, raw toxic sewage is being pumped into our waterways and our beautiful beaches. Since the beginning of 2025, there have been two instances totalling in nearly 10 hours of sewage being pumped into our waterways in Crawley alone; this is totally unacceptable. That is why the Labour government has introduced immediate action to end the disgraceful behaviour of water companies and their bosses.

Under this Labour Government, water executives will no longer line their own pockets whilst pumping out this filth. If they refuse to comply, they could end up in the dock and face prison time.

This Bill is a major step forward in our wider reform to fix the broken water system. The Labour Government will outline further legislation to fundamentally transform how the water industry is run and speed up the delivery of upgrades to our sewage infrastructure to clean up our waterways for good.”